Microsoft is continuing to build out its Connected Vehicle Platform, a collection of Azure-connected IoT, diagnostic, security and other services.

On September 6, the two took another step along the partnership path, with TomTom announcing that its navigation technology has been integrated with Microsoft's Connected Vehicle Platform.

Via this integration, "navigation usage and diagnostics data can be sent from vehicles to Microsoft Azure where the data can be used by automakers to generate data-driven insights to deliver tailored services and to make better informed design and engineering decisions," according to TomTom's press release.

In February 2019, TomTom was among the vendors Microsoft selected as location data providers for mapping services for Azure Maps, Bing, Cortana, Windows and unspecified "future offerings."

Microsoft's Connected Vehicle Platform (MCVP) -- formerly known as its Connected Car Platform -- is all about getting vehicles to connect to Microsoft cloud services like Azure, Office 365 and more on the back-end.

It gives car makers and integration partners a way to deliver vehicle sensor telemetry into a data lake running on Azure, according to a Microsoft white paper on MCVP.

Microsoft's pitch is it can deliver an "automotive grade, cloud-based data pipeline implementation for secure, hyperscale communication between vehicles and their end connected mobility services (such as telematics, diagnostics and remote vehicle
feature control)."